Pages and Posts Tagged ‘Alaska’

DEADHORSE, ALASKA-- Arctic fox seem to make their living by following bears around and scavenging. We have seen foxes trailing behind bears as they travel, and their tracks often wind around bear prints... {Read More »}

DEADHORSE, ALASKA-- One of the reasons the polar bear diet is interesting is that it is fairly simple in comparison to the closely-related brown bear (grizzly bear). Polar bears mainly eat seals, and this is reflected in their dentition... {Read More »}

KAKTOVIK, ALASKA-- The captures have been going well. We caught the largest bear I have seen, an adult male who weighed 1,147 lbs. His neck was several times the size of my waist, and I could not fit both hands around his snout... {Read More »}

OLIKTOK POINT, ALASKA-- Last week I made the trip back up to the Arctic coast. Along with two other students from the University of Wyoming who are helping with captures and sample processing, I flew from Denver to Anchorage on Thursday night, then onto Deadhorse... {Read More »}

DEADHORSE, ALASKA-- In the last dispatch, I wrote of polar bears getting by without food. In that situation – no food – the bears must be using body stores of fat for energy. Some bears can carry almost 50% of their body mass as fat... {Read More »}

KAKTOVIK, ALASKA-- The size of polar bears always amazes me. This bear had paws that were as wide as my hand is long, and it was not even a large male. The largest males can weigh over 1500 lbs, twice as much as this bear... {Read More »}

DEADHORSE, ALASKA-- Deadhorse is surprisingly accessible, but it is definitely in a wildly remote place; yesterday I woke to sunny skies and a temperature of -17 degrees (Fahrenheit). Spring warmth is coming – three weeks ago it was 30 below – but it is still winter here in the Arctic... {Read More »}

DEADHORSE, ALASKA-- When I began thinking about logistics for this project, one of the first questions I had was “How do you get to the Arctic?” I had done field work in wildnerness areas before, but nothing as remote as northern Alaska. For our first season on capturing polar bears... {Read More »}